Belfast: Violent Disorder

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. There will be agreement and recognition that activity online can provide extraordinary opportunities and benefits, but clearly it can also provide a toxic environment that drives the kind of criminality we have seen in recent times.

I hope my hon. Friend will understand that we are working at pace across Government through the defending democracy taskforce, and working with colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and right across law enforcement, as well as with operational partners, to make sure that activity online is monitored in a way that will best enable us to reduce and eliminate the kind of activity she referred to. She will understand that that is not an easy thing to do. We are constantly looking for the social media companies and the tech companies to exercise greater responsibility, but I assure her of the importance we attach to these matters. I have had meetings recently with ministerial colleagues to look at what more we can do, and I assure my hon. Friend that we are looking into that carefully.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Minister share my concern that, irrespective of the personal motivation of the perpetrator, the circumstances by which he came into this country send a signal to those ideological movements abroad that wish us harm that there is a very easy back door by which they can infiltrate this country? If an operation of that sort is mounted in the future, what sort of violent response will there be to a spectacular terrorist attack that could and should have been prevented by secure borders?

[Dan Jarvis]

As always, the right hon. Gentleman raises a very thoughtful series of questions. I know he will understand that I am not going to get into the detail of the potential motivations of the alleged offender in the particular circumstances, but his general challenge is the right one. It is the job of this Government, and of any Government, to ensure that the United Kingdom is the hardest possible target for our adversaries and for those who would do us harm.

The right hon. Gentleman knows, from his previous service on the Intelligence and Security Committee, a lot about the nature and range of threats that we face as a country. I hope he also knows that this Government, like the last Government, do everything they possibly can to make sure that where there are particular points of vulnerability, we are bearing down on them, and that we have in place the right capabilities and resources to keep the public safe. There is no more important duty of any Government than being able to do that, and that is what I as the Security Minister and my colleagues across Government spend each hour of every day making sure that we do.

Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Government’s response to the House’s humble Address of 4 February 2026.

On 4 February I came before the House to debate the Humble Address motion. I said at the time that it was in the national interest to be transparent and to act as quickly as we could, and with the second publication of documents earlier this week on Monday, the Government have done so. Today’s debate is a further opportunity for Members to put questions and, indeed, debate the content of the documents. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, who is alongside me on the Front Bench, will listen to the debate and close it in due course.

As we debate these issues today, we should ensure that we keep Jeffrey Epstein’s victims at the forefront of our minds. What Epstein did was abhorrent and unforgivable. He was a vile, evil paedophile, and I denounce him and his actions as strongly today as I did on 4 February when I came to the Dispatch Box.

The Prime Minister has taken responsibility for appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. He has said that if he knew then what he knows now, he would never have appointed him, and he has apologised.

I think it is worth setting out the process that was followed in order to publish such a large volume of material on Monday.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the right hon. Gentleman is going to talk about process, I would be very grateful if he could clear up one matter. I have a high regard for the right hon. Gentleman’s integrity, and so I hope he will not dance around this subject, as has been done by others in the past.

In the first tranche of documents there were a number of notes sent by private secretaries to the Prime Minister. If I were allowed to use a prop, I would open the documents to pages 3 and 8, where Members would see notes discussing the situation as regards how to appoint the ambassador, Peter Mandelson and so forth. Under those notes are big boxes headed “Prime Minister Comments”. The normal course of action when a Prime Minister receives a document of that sort is that he notes down his response to it. These boxes are totally blank. My simple question to the right hon. Gentleman is this: are they blank because the Prime Minister made no notes whatsoever or because any notes that the Prime Minister made have been redacted and removed? The Intelligence and Security Committee deals routinely with even more sensitive material, and every time there is a redaction in a publication, there are three asterisks to show that the redaction has taken place. Have there been redactions of the Prime Minister’s notes on these memorandums that were sent to him for decision?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The answer is that they are blank now because they were blank then. The formal decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador was conveyed by the Prime Minister’s then principal private secretary in a letter to the Foreign Office. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to the empty box notes, and the reason that they are empty is that there was nothing to redact. I hope that is a sufficiently clear answer.

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[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

That was another important part of what was done, and the House should also take reassurance from that. I made the point about precedents to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and the Government also sought to take that independent legal advice on their interpretation of complying with the Humble Address.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will take an intervention from the right hon. Gentleman, but then I need to make a bit more progress.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I want to clear up the point about precedents. It may be that I am wrong about this, but I do not think there is any precedent for the House deciding that the Intelligence and Security Committee specifically should look at material that was to be redacted before it went to the public. The Intelligence and Security Committee, as the Minister well knows, was founded in 1994. Since that time, there has never been even one leak from the Committee. So there is no comparison between making things available to the Intelligence and Security Committee—the only parliamentary body entitled to see highly classified material, and one which never leaks—and to any other body. While he says, “This is all led by officials. It is okay for the officials to see it, but not to release it to anyone else,” the reason the ISC was chosen for the motion is that it is within the ring of secrecy, and that is unaffected by any precedents regarding bodies that do not have that special status.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is just that if he looks at the wording of the Humble Address, he will see that it lists a series of classes of documents, and then it says, “except papers”—those that were referred to the ISC. That is our compliance with the motion.

Let me turn back to the process, which, as I said, was undertaken by officials. They sought returns from all Government Departments, including material, as has been referred to, on non-corporate communication channels. There were multiple rounds of discovery to ensure that searches returned material relevant to the full scope of the motion. Some documents were assessed as likely prejudicial to national security or international relations—the point I was just making—and, as I committed to the House in February, they were then referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Due to the wide scope of the motion and the significant volume of material that needed to be located and reviewed, the first publication, on 11 March, was focused on the parts of the motion that were of most urgent interest to the House: Peter Mandelson’s appointment, his withdrawal and the severance. The second tranche, which was published on Monday, contains material relevant to the parts of the motion that cover communications and documents concerning Peter Mandelson’s appointment and vetting, and messages between Peter Mandelson and Ministers, special advisers and senior civil servants in the months prior to and throughout his tenure as ambassador. All documents held by the Government have now been disclosed, save those that are being withheld on the request of the Metropolitan police.

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[Sir Julian Lewis]

I think it is worth just putting on the record the actual words from that due diligence note, which can be found on page 11 of the first volume. It talks about a 2019 report commissioned by JPMorgan:

“The report cited Epstein’s personal records which showed contact beginning in 2002 and continuing throughout the 2000s.

After Epstein was first convicted of procuring an underage girl in 2008, their relationship continued across 2009-2011, beginning when Lord Mandelson was business minister and continuing after the end of the Labour government. Mandelson reportedly stayed in Epstein’s House while he was in jail in June 2009.”

That is from a document which it is not in doubt the Prime Minister saw, yet he went ahead with making this appointment.

[Alex Burghart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that timely spelling out of exactly what the Prime Minister read—and yet he went ahead and made the appointment anyway. I take the remarks of the Paymaster General and other Ministers totally at face value and totally sincerely, but it is clear that the Prime Minister was not thinking in that way.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

We are a very long way from one of the original aspects of this scandal, which was an allegation that the Prime Minister knew when appointing Peter Mandelson that he had failed his developed vetting. We have moved a long way from that, but one thing we have not moved away from is that the man who was appointed was a “best pal” of the world’s most notorious paedophile, that he remained his “best pal” when he was in prison, and that he stayed in his house. Personally, I found it so profoundly shocking when I heard that was what happened. It is a matter of good character to stand by friends when they are in trouble, but when they are convicted of a terrible crime like that, you do not stand with them, you do not stay in their house and they should not be your “best pal”. It is not just that: we have also learned that Peter Mandelson was friends with Russian oligarchs, Chinese Finance Ministers and former Israeli security chiefs; he had a loan of £1 million from an unknown source, which he used to buy shares in a secretive Israeli company; and, of course, there are all the issues in relation to his business dealings.

Given that it is the job of the Foreign Affairs Committee to try to ensure that the Foreign Office is as good as it possibly can be, the Committee has tried to remain focused on why it was that a man like that—when it came to developed vetting, it was decided that he was a case of high concern and that his clearance for vetting should be denied—was nevertheless appointed. There is a lot of gossip and other stuff, the tittle-tattle and things that obviously the Westminster village loves, but the serious point is: how could we have got it so wrong and how did this happen?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

At the beginning of her speech, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee said most powerfully that what happened in relation to Epstein should alone have been a sufficient bar for anything to go further, but even if that had not happened, it was already in the due diligence document, purely on foreign policy grounds: the Prime Minister was told that Mandelson gave a speech at the University of Hong Kong where he claimed that the rule of law and independence of the judiciary remain intact there. In November 2024, I personally challenged the proposed appointment on the grounds that Mandelson had said in a radio interview that the basis for a settlement with Ukraine would be that Ukraine should give up to Russia all the land that Russia had so far occupied, and that Ukraine should give up any hope of ever belonging to the NATO alliance. These were political grounds that should have ruled him out. The Prime Minister knew about them, but nothing seemed to prevent him from following through on his intent to appoint such an unsuitable individual.

[Emily Thornberry]

The right hon. Gentleman tempts me down a path that I was not going to go down, although I have gone down it for quite some length in the Committee hearings. It seems to me that all these papers tend to show one thing: the Prime Minister was not particularly interested in the appointment of the ambassador to the United States. He was certainly not a good friend of his: there is no correspondence between them, there are no chatty messages and there is no attempt to get the Prime Minister to vote for Mandelson when he was standing for chancellor of the University of Oxford—I mean, there is not a friendship at all.

The criticism that I make, and I make openly, is that I think the decision was subcontracted to others who were close to Mandelson. The criticism that one can level at the Prime Minister is that he delegated and he did not watch sufficiently what was going on, essentially giving power to others who then abused it—I think that is central. That is not very flattering to the Prime Minister, but it is an honest assessment of the evidence that I have heard. I think the appointment was being pushed and I think that it was being pushed by his then chief of staff, who has a style—and that style is, “When I want to do something, I will go for it hard, I will go for it fast and I will push everybody out of the way.” Once Mandelson had not been elected chancellor at Oxford, someone who should have been a marginal candidate—and had been, as I understand it, just in November 2024—suddenly, within two weeks, moved from being a borderline candidate to being the main person in the frame.

[Emily Thornberry]

We may be talking about the same thing. Another way of putting it is that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff had taken responsibility for it on his behalf and was pushing it, and the power that the chief of staff had was because he was the chief of staff to the Prime Minister. It is borderline one way or the other.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I disagree with the right hon. Lady’s analysis because the whole point of what we have been saying from the Opposition Benches is that the Prime Minister himself knew about these points: he knew what Mandelson had done in relation to Epstein; he knew what he had said in relation to justice in Hong Kong; and he knew what Mandelson had said in that radio interview because I had challenged him about it. I must say, although it may not meet the high standards of court litigation, that when the Prime Minister brushed aside my challenge to him on 21 November, he sat down with a very notable and ingratiating grin, and I turned to the person sitting next to me and said, “He’s definitely going to appoint Mandelson.” It was his decision.

[Emily Thornberry]

I will move on, but before I do so, I will say something that I think any fair-minded person will know. Presumably the job of being Prime Minister means that there is so much on your desk, and if someone comes to you and says, “Don’t worry about this, I’ll take it and sort it”, there is a temptation to go, “Okay, you do that, because I have 7,000 other things that I have to deal with today.” I do not know—I have never been Prime Minister—but I would assume that that is the reality of the situation.

The question is how somebody who is so manifestly inappropriate gets appointed. It may be that those behaving in this way did so because they felt under huge amounts of political pressure, but how does someone whose case was of high concern and for whom it was recommended that clearance be denied become interpreted as a borderline case, leaning against? How do we bridge that gap? The only way that gap is bridged is through mitigations, so I spend my time looking for mitigations, and I cannot find any. Ian Collard, who was one of the security men speaking to Olly Robbins—who, at the time, was the permanent under-secretary—mentioned the importance of mitigations 10 times in his written evidence to us, and Olly Robbins talked about it six times. It is at the forefront of their evidence.

I have already referred to an aide-mémoire that Ian Collard made in September. He says that he looked again at the summary. He accepts that UKSV’s statement was

“‘this case presents as a high concern’ with a recommendation of ‘clearance denied or withdrawn’”,

and he

“noted that, as well as the tick boxes”—

red tick-boxes, which were ticked—

“UKSV stated in the final case assessment: ‘Overall, I believe that this is a very borderline case…If a clearance was awarded to the individual by the Department, it is recommended that a very robust risk management model is put in place’”.

I do not know whether that is just Ian Collard’s memory of what he may or may not have read—well, I know that he did not read it, because he says that he did not read it at that stage. I do not understand how the UKSV paper can say, “Don’t give him the job”, and then it can also be believed to be a very borderline case with robust risk management recommended. I suspect that the latter bit is an interpretation—a way in which, it was hoped, the difficulty that Mandelson was essentially being refused vetting could be slid over into “He can be given the job, so long as there are robust mitigations.”

But where are those mitigations? When Sir Olly gave evidence to our Committee, I said to him,

“I do not really follow why you would not know the contents of the UKSV document and their concerns or even that they said that there was high concern about Peter Mandelson. I do not understand how you can not know that if you are considering what the mitigations are. You cannot have the mitigations without knowing what the problem is.”

He said,

“The risks were explained to me, but I have not seen the underlying documentation. That is what I am saying. That obviously strikes members of the Committee as odd”—

well, it certainly did—

“but in all my years as a civil servant—many of them as a relatively senior one—I have never seen a UKSV document, other than the ones that I have filled in myself.”

It is ridiculous. If he is putting down mitigations in order to deal with legitimate concerns and a security threat, he needs to know what that security threat is, and to understand that UKSV is saying that it is very serious and that Mandelson should not be given the job—yet he says, “I didn’t know. I just thought it was borderline, leaning the other way.” I mean, this is Alice in Wonderland.

[Emily Thornberry]

I really do not know. The Foreign Office got the UKSV clearance on 29 January 2025, and it says that it did something about it, but we cannot see what that is. An email on page 72 of part I is the nearest thing to mitigations I have been able to find, and Ian Collard referred to it in his evidence. It is an email he wrote on 30 January, and I think it is the mitigations, but I just do not think it is a robust set of mitigations to deal with serious security concerns. The email states:

“As part of the usual clearance policy process, UKSV identified some areas in his application for ESND to review”—

that is the security man.

“I understand that Lord Mandelson’s private sector engagements are being managed by HRD”—

that is human resources—

“and the Legal Directorate through the conflict of interest process.”

Who knows? It continues:

“With regard to personal conduct”—

I think that is hanging out with oligarchs, being friends with the Finance Minister, borrowing money and who knows what else—

“I understand that Lord Mandelson has received a letter from Mervyn Thomas, informing him of his responsibilities as an FCDO employee, including under the Diplomatic Service Regulations.”

Is that it? He got a letter from a man telling him to behave himself! We have not seen the letter, and I do not know what it is. The email continues:

“Matters pertaining to his overseas contacts will certainly be reviewed by the STRAP authorities.”

STRAP is another issue, and we should not be distracted by STRAP. Mandelson needed to follow the developed vetting before getting anywhere near the latest STRAP stuff.

It is important that we take these things in order. We have that email, which is about as pathetic as it can be. There might be something in the nine-page summary that some Members sitting in this Chamber have seen. It might be that that summary showing the security concerns has a page or so at the end—it is a blank page—asking the Foreign Office for its response. UKSV is giving a recommendation saying, “Mandelson should not be given the job, he is a security risk.” The process might be that the Foreign Office has to write something on that form saying, “We have read this. We don’t agree with you. We think he should be appointed, and we’re going to put in the following mitigations”, and then list them. It might be that the Foreign Office did not fill that in properly, and it might be that that bit of the form remains blank. I do not know whether anybody is in a position to be able to enlighten me one way or the other, or whether we will have to wait for the police to give us the document.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Emily Thornberry]

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman is one of the people I am referring to, but I give way.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Surely that information would be precisely the kind that could be safely entrusted to the ISC, and it ought to have been entrusted with it.

[Emily Thornberry]

I suspect that the ISC may have been entrusted with it—that is what I am trying to say. I am hoping that if the form is blank, it is not necessarily the case that anything of particular security interest was being disclosed, and it is just a process issue, where the Foreign Office did not follow process as it should have and at least put on that form, “Yes, we have done these things.”

I am just trying to do my job, holding the Government to account. Why did Britain employ a man who was a security risk to this really important job? We did so because of the mitigations, but nobody will tell us the mitigations. After all these thousands of bits of paper, and after my poor right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West coming to the Chamber 11 times, we still cannot get to the root of it.

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[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I am happy to give the right hon. Gentleman that clarity. The documents that we received were unredacted documents marked with the proposed redactions the Government sought to make for reasons of protecting national security or international relations. Where we agreed with the Government, we agreed that those redactions should be made; where we disagreed, those redactions were not made. We saw all the documents unredacted, and we decided whether to accept the Government’s proposals for redaction or not. The House made it clear that it wanted the final word on those redactions—yes or no—to be ours as a Committee, and not the Government’s. I hope that is of assistance to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

For the sake of completeness, will my right hon. and learned Friend explain whether the Committee saw the third category of documents—those redacted or withheld because of the police inquiry—or whether the Committee labours under the same degree of ignorance as the rest of us?

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[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again. She could still develop her case if she talked about parliamentary Committees in general, but I chaired the ISC for four years, and, as I said in an earlier intervention, the ISC has been in existence since 1994. The ISC never leaks. If it did leak, the person who leaked anything would be criminally prosecuted. There is no question, if these vetting documents were shown to the ISC, of its having a chilling effect on anything, because the ISC is hermetically sealed. It does not leak about far more important things than the miserable private life of Peter Mandelson.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the right hon. Member for his comment about the ISC. I will continue to take advice from that vetting process: it needs to be even more hermetically sealed. We need to take real care over this. Any over-sharing will have an effect on everyone who is asked to sit down and give the frankest and most private information, and we need to make sure that they are doing that so that their potential risk to our security as a country is very well known. We cannot allow self-censoring because of this process. We do not need those far-reaching unintended consequences.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate, but at times it has been painful to listen to, because we are talking about a really terrible decision that was made by the Prime Minister, and about the retraumatising of victims, who have to keep hearing about this issue without seeing justice. If we were talking about a way to get justice, that would be different. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) made an excellent speech, and I agree that she has been a consistent champion of women’s safety, particularly online, but these issues have been constantly raised.

Throughout the debate, hon. Members—not the hon. Member for Pontypridd—have waved or thrown around a significant number of dead cats. In fact, for anyone who has spent a lot of time going through the documents, perhaps it should be red boxes that have been waved around, especially ones with “President of the United States” written on them. An awful lot of time seems to have been dedicated to getting a red box for the President of the United States—that is civil servant time that could have been better spent being more transparent, rather than chasing the specific maker of red boxes and getting them to print things on one.

One of the dead cats, or red boxes, is about the mitigations. It is important that there should have been mitigations, and that point was made when the Prime Minister was first given a document about whether Peter Mandelson should be appointed. Its advice was that mitigations would need to be put in place. The problem is not that mitigations were not put in place—I am not saying that they were put in place, or that we know or do not know which ones were put in place; the problem is that the Prime Minister made the decision in the first place.

The information on the bit of paper that was given to the Prime Minister talked about the “reputational risk” of appointing somebody who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. It was not a reputational risk; it was just a risk—a risk of retraumatising victims and a risk of giving somebody who had close links to various companies and to Russia a position of power. The Prime Minister knew about those problems, and it was incredibly cute of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee to try to say that the Prime Minister really was not responsible for this, because he delegated it to other people. The Prime Minister made the decision—the Prime Minister has held up his hands and said that he made the decision—and nobody in the House can say that the fault was that the mitigations were not put in place. The fault is with the Prime Minister for making a political appointment and choosing somebody he knew—he was told it—was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I entirely agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree with me about this? We have established clearly that those blank boxes, in which the Prime Minister could have made a comment when he was given the crucial information and the options leading up to the appointment of Mandelson, were intentionally blank. They are there precisely for the Prime Minister to record his response and, indeed, his decision. The fact that they were not redacted, but were genuinely blank, suggests to me—I cannot think of any other explanation—that the Prime Minister did not want to fill them in because he knew that there was something shameful about the appointment he was about to approve, and he did not want it on the record.

[Kirsty Blackman]

It is also clear that the Prime Minister had made up his mind, and it almost did not matter what people said. There was an awareness of the article that had been published saying that Peter Mandelson stayed in Jeffrey Epstein’s house while Jeffrey Epstein was in prison—it does not get much worse than that. The Prime Minister had made the decision, as we can see from a whole lot of this documentation.

I appreciate the reasons for how the redactions have been made, and I appreciate that this massive amount of work was pulled together by a significant number of people dealing with things in all different formats. However, there is a significant lack of consistency in this document that makes it really difficult to work out what is going on. For example, there are spaces in the document. If we look at page 199 of part III, Jon Garvie apparently sent a blank message, to which Peter Mandelson replied, “Quite”. I do not know how he could have replied “Quite” to a blank message. The document does not have stars, it does not say that the message has been redacted and it does not explain what the message was. At other points in the document, it does say what the messages were and what the redactions are—a certain picture, or something. As I have said, I appreciate the amount of work that was put in to pull this document together, but we are not getting the full picture. We are not seeing everything because the document has in some places been put together in a not very helpful way.

I turn to the Morgan McSweeney messages. As I have mentioned, Morgan McSweeney has lost his phone and therefore cannot provide WhatsApp messages. However, on page 173 of part III, he has provided group WhatsApp messages. The document specifically says that the

“messages were provided to the Cabinet Office by Morgan McSweeney”.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) said, it would be really nice if there was an explanation of why the information that is not there is not there. She gave back a nil return: she was asked for her messages with Peter Mandelson, and she replied that there were no messages with Peter Mandelson. On the Morgan McSweeney stuff, for example, it would be helpful if it said against these group chat messages that he could access only these group chat messages through another method, and he could not access his own personal messages, which is why we do not see them, or that he had disappearing messages on, and that is why we cannot see them. We do not know the reason: we do not know if it is because there is nothing, or because there was something, but it has now gone. I think that the level of transparency we are getting is deeply unhelpful.

On the speech by the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), I have never had a constituent say that they would like less transparency. I have never had one say that they would like to know less about why the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson; they want to know why the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson. Today is perhaps the wrong day to make a call for there to be less information. I think that our discussions about this decision should be centred on the victims. The fact is that the Prime Minister made these decisions knowing about the victims, and knowing that Peter Mandelson was friends with Epstein and continued to be friends with Epstein.

It did not matter what red flags were shown up by the processes; the political decision had been made. We know that. We know that the appointment was announced in advance of these things taking place. We know that the decision had been made. We know that—for some reason that I am still not totally clear about—the Prime Minister thought Peter Mandelson was the best person for the job and the person who would do the best for national security, the people of these islands and the Labour Government. That was the decision-making process that the Prime Minister must have gone through.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), said that we do not know what was in the driver’s head. We do not have that really key piece of information. We can have the driver apologise and say, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it,” but until they explain why they did it, we are not going to understand it, and the apology sounds hollower than I think the Prime Minister would like it to.

On transparency, we know that, even though there has been a significant amount of work and there is a significant number of documents, we do not have everything. Some things have been held back because of the police investigation or because of national security. I completely understand and accept that that is the case. However, there are other things that we do not have. On 4 February, the day the Humble Address went through, I submitted a number of freedom of information requests to the Cabinet Office. I received an acknowledgment of those FOI requests and, on 9 March, I received an email telling me that there was a delay in responding. I have received nothing since. Despite submitting an FOI request on 4 February, I have received nothing but an acknowledgment and then one update from the Cabinet Office, on 9 March, telling me that it was very sorry about the delay.

It would be very helpful if those on the Government Front Bench could ensure that I get a response to my FOI requests, because it is a legal requirement for Governments and the Cabinet Office to provide responses to such things and to make it clear if there is a delay why there is a delay, or if they are not going to provide a response why they are not going to provide a response. I would be interested to know how many members of the public have submitted FOI requests relating to the decision-making process or messages about Peter Mandelson, and have not received adequate responses from the Cabinet Office. I do not know why the Cabinet Office has not responded to me, but I would be concerned if it was doing exactly the same thing with members of the public, who do not have the ability to stand here and criticise the Cabinet Office.

The last thing I want to talk about is where things are with the Prime Minister and his currency at the moment. The Prime Minister is not standing here defending himself. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister is once again having to fill that role—I do not envy him. We have heard a defence of the Prime Minister’s decision from very few Members on either side of the House. I do not think anybody is trying to defend the Prime Minister’s decision. That brings us back to the Prime Minister’s judgment and to the fact that he made this decision. It was not, as some have tried to say, some civil servants or special advisers who made the decision. It was the Prime Minister who made the decision, however much his arm may have been twisted.

Perhaps, as was suggested by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it was others who really pushed this appointment and did the decision making. Maybe it was down others, in which case why would you have a Prime Minister who can be so easily led by others that they are willing to appoint somebody who was friends with a convicted paedophile to the most senior role in the ambassadorial service? We must assume that the Prime Minister is not that easily led. We must assume that the Prime Minister cannot have his arm twisted by officials or special advisers, in which case he made the decision. He is not standing here explaining why he made that decision. He is not meeting the victims. The worst thing that has been uncovered today is the fact that the Prime Minister has had requests from those victims and not met them. That is despite the fact that we can see in the mass of documents before us the people who the Prime Minister did meet—people who my constituents would be much less keen on him meeting than the actual victims of Epstein.

The Prime Minister has a significant number of questions to answer. This is not the change that he promised when he stood on his manifesto in 2024. This is not a Parliament that is working for the benefit of people. It is a Parliament that is continuing to hide things, and to duck away from having the difficult conversations and from listening to the people it really needs to listen to the most. The Government need to take a long hard look at themselves, change their priorities, and listen to the requests that are being made by the people who have been harmed the most by this complete shambles.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister (Darren Jones)]

I thank Members from across the House for their contributions this afternoon and for sharing the condolences expressed by the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), on the news that we learned during the debate that Sir Alex Younger, the former director general of MI6, had passed.

As I have said to the House before, while it is right for Members to discuss process and how the Government have responded to the Humble Address, we must not neglect to remember the women and girls who are at the very heart of this matter. Their suffering cannot be forgotten in this pursuit of justice—a pursuit that has been denied to them for too long. On that point, I want to start by paying particular thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for her powerful speech this afternoon and to take this opportunity to thank her for the work she carried out so diligently as part of this Government as the Minister for Victims.

The accounts that my hon. Friend has shared with this House this afternoon from victims such as Lisa are harrowing and should remind us of the anger and suffering that they rightly continue to feel each time we have one of these debates. But my hon. Friend’s speech has made me think that just reading the words on this page alone feels insufficient in the context of the cultural challenges that she raised, and with your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to take a moment to take this opportunity to ask myself questions about my relationship with Peter Mandelson.

Did I consciously ignore the stories that followed Peter Mandelson, or indeed know about many of them, from many, many years ago? I do not think that I did. Did I ever ignore warnings that were put to me about Peter Mandelson? I did not receive any, to do so. But as I reflected on my hon. Friend’s speech, it made me think: did I at best subconsciously treat Peter Mandelson differently because I believed him to have influence and power within the Labour party? I think the answer to that question is yes, I did. Have I benefited from that relationship in the time I have been an elected politician? I think in part the answer to that question is yes, I did. For that I would like to apologise to the House, to the victims, to Lisa, and commit to then doing something about it.

In the first instance, I hear my hon. Friend’s request for a meeting with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. I know that there is a request with No. 10 for the Prime Minister to do so, but if she thinks it appropriate, I make myself available for that meeting to discuss the issues that she has raised. I know that she will continue to be a strong advocate from the Back Benches for the action this Government are taking to halve violence against women and girls, as well as to pursue the duty of candour on which I know she worked so hard, and I look forward to continuing my work with her on these important issues.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The Minister has shown once again what a decent man he is, and he is doing a very difficult job in defence of somebody who knew a lot more than he did. He was not chief of staff at the time that the Mandelson appointment was being carried out. On page 8 of the first bundle, we have the note from the private secretary to the Prime Minister, which says:

“We have sought a due diligence review…and your Chief of Staff”—

Morgan McSweeney at the time—

“has discussed Peter’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein which we will go through with you, but your Director of Communications is satisfied with his responses to questions about contact.”

However, we also know from earlier in the bundle that the Prime Minister specifically knew that Mandelson had stayed in Epstein’s flat while Epstein was in in jail for the abuse of an under-age girl. The Prime Minister knew all that at the time. What is the purpose of having a box at the end marked for the Prime Minister’s comments on the alternatives he has been given when in fact, as we now know and as has been clearly explained by the Paymaster General, there has been no redaction—the Prime Minister did not comment? Why did the Prime Minister withhold any remarks on this highly contentious matter? Where did he comment? Where did he give his decision? He certainly did not do it in the place that he was supposed to do it.

[Darren Jones]

In relation to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, he will know, because I have confirmed it to the House at the Dispatch Box previously, that questions were put by the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff to Peter Mandelson following the due diligence report to seek further information about the stories reported in the newspaper. He will also know that Peter Mandelson replied to those questions, and that information was then considered by those in No. 10.

As I have confirmed to the House, that document—the question and its answers—is one of the documents being held by the Metropolitan police. I have been advised repeatedly that I am not permitted to disclose what I have seen in that document on the Floor of the House, so I am afraid it will have to be one of those questions that remains until such a time as the Metropolitan police publishes its documentation. In relation to the second part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, I refer him to the Paymaster General’s answer earlier today. That is the answer to that question.

This is my 11th update to the House on this matter, and I am grateful for the opportunity to answer Members’ questions. I will speak to a number of issues first, before turning to some specific questions from Members and setting out what the Government intend to do next.

Since the Humble Address motion was passed on 4 February, the House will know that a huge disclosure exercise has been undertaken by Government officials. The motion called for the disclosure of documents in respect of the appointment and dismissal of Peter Mandelson as His Majesty’s ambassador to Washington, alongside relevant communications. The publication of documents on 11 March, followed by the second tranche on Monday, has done that, in the Government’s view. I hope the Government have provided the House with the reassurance it needs that, with the exception of the small number of documents withheld at the request of the Metropolitan police, which we intend to publish when we are allowed to do so, the Government have discharged their duties to the House in relation to the Humble Address.

Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

We are concluding internal drafting of the peerages Bill, and will look to secure time to introduce it in this Session. I can assure my hon. Friend and the House that we want to introduce legislation that is effective and meaningful; that is certainly our intention.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I think the country has a right to know how the Prime Minister reacted at the end of Mandelson’s vetting process. Have the Prime Minister’s comments on the outcome of the vetting been released, are they being withheld, or are we expected to believe that he made no comment about it at all?

[Darren Jones]

Let me make two points. As I made clear in my statement, vetting documents have been withheld by the Metropolitan police, although some of the documents have gone through the Intelligence and Security Committee, but I refer the right hon. Gentleman to what the Prime Minister said previously. As has been clear, the Foreign Office did not flag this information with the Prime Minister; he was not aware of it until it had been leaked to The Guardian.

Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

The second tranche of information will publish all remaining documents except those that are currently with the Metropolitan police in relation to ongoing criminal investigations. As I said to the House, this will be a very significant publication, which will warrant careful consideration from Members across the House. We want to publish it with sufficient notice to allow Members to consider it before coming to the House to ask any questions they may have of the Government, which is why we are now publishing it after the Whitsun recess.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In more than 30 years of its existence, the Intelligence and Security Committee has never once suffered from a leak. Therefore, anything that is disclosed to it, no matter how sensitive, is not going to be published. Therefore, the question of it undermining the security vetting process if such raw data were published does not arise, because the ISC is the one parliamentary body guaranteed to ensure that that does not happen. So can the Minister stop obfuscating on that aspect and can he confirm that, irrespective of the question of the raw data, what will definitely be made available to the ISC, if it has not been already, are the annotations and the documents that show how an initial failure to pass vetting for Lord Mandelson became a decision to approve him and state that he had been successful in getting through the process?

[Darren Jones]

I can confirm that all documents that need to be referred to the ISC have now been referred to it. That process has concluded, which is why we can move to publication after the recess.

Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response Update

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I am not sure that I should declare my voting intention from the Dispatch Box, but I refer the hon. Gentleman to my previous answer.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Government are keen to emphasise their transparency in the course of dealing with the Humble Address requests and demands, so here is an opportunity to put that to the test. Last Tuesday, I put down a question for written answer by the Prime Minister:

“To ask the Prime Minister who first suggested to him that Peter Mandelson should be appointed as Ambassador to the United States.”

It was accepted and published as such by the Table Office. Subsequently, it has been transferred to the Cabinet Office, for which he has responsibility. It is due to be answered tomorrow. Will the Minister give the answer to that question tomorrow, on time and substantively?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister’s responsibilities are just growing and growing!

Government Procurement Strategy

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Ward]

There are few greater champions of the buy British agenda than my hon. Friend, although there are a few of us in the Government as well. We are trying to make progress on that agenda. What I am setting out today is what I can do with Government guidance and by using the exemptions that already exist in national security restrictions. We have not jumped to legislation; I am trying to use the powers that I have. The point that he is making is about a bigger agenda that I hope we can get to, in order to drive forward more support for British industry. This is the start of it but it is not the end, and we will work with him on doing that.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Too often consumers buy products that, when they get to examine them, turn out to have been manufactured in places like China. What safeguards do the Government have in their new procurement strategy to ensure that there are no concealed foreign supply chain components in the contracts that they intend to award? Why are the SMEs—or any companies—that are bidding having to demonstrate trade union recognition if they might have a workforce that do not require that?

[Chris Ward]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, we have robust processes in place on supply chains, which the Department for Business and Trade leads on. The announcement that I made before Easter does not change that; the strategy sticks with the existing protections that we have under the Procurement Act regulations. What I am talking about here is how we can use those powers to direct Departments and use Government buying power to do more.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about union recognition, I am sorry but I missed the very end of his question. There is nothing in the strategy that changes union recognition within the procurement system—that can already be weighted within the social value requirement—but it takes an important step on insourcing for Government Departments. I am incredibly proud that this Government are doing that and it is part of the manifesto on which we were elected.

Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I have come from the Foreign Affairs Committee sitting this morning, where we had the opportunity to speak to Sir Olly Robbins as our witness. I want to use my speech to pull out some of the pertinent points that we heard that I think are relevant.

Before I start, I absolutely agree with Members across the House who say that Lord Mandelson was a completely inappropriate and terrible choice for our ambassador, and that there has clearly been a failure in the process that ended up in his appointment and in the vetting. However, it is important that we look at what Sir Olly said in the witness statement today, because some of that contradicts what has been said in the House.

The first important thing that Sir Olly said is that no Minister—not the Prime Minister, not the Foreign Secretary, nor any other Minister—or any official in No. 10 was given sight of the fact that UKSV had declined Mandelson’s security vetting. They had no sight at all of any details of that vetting. He said that, justified that and defended that. No officials or Ministers should have sight of that vetting, because it is extremely personal and sensitive information. I went through that process myself when I worked at the Foreign Office, and we do not want to create any conditions that make people afraid to share sensitive information in the vetting process, thinking that at some point in the future it might be leaked, whether to politicians, to others in the line management chain or, as we have seen, to the press, because that undermines the integrity of the process as a whole. That reinforces what the Prime Minister said yesterday.

Secondly, Sir Olly disputed the characterisation that UKSV had failed Peter Mandelson’s vetting: that it was in some way a binary choice inside the Foreign Office. It is important that we explain—or that I try to justify—what Sir Olly was saying, because the FCDO has a slightly different process from that of other parts of Government. It is an overseas Department—a bit like the Ministry of Defence, for example—so people with seriously long careers and all sorts of different interests come into those roles. I am not suggesting that Peter Mandelson should have passed vetting, not at all, but it is not unusual for the FCDO rather than UKSV to make a decision on a borderline case. According to Sir Olly’s evidence, that is a normal process. It is important that we hold to that in future.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am really surprised that the hon. Gentleman is swallowing this guff about this being a borderline case. It was quite clear that security vetting put this case in the red box, which meant “fail”. Sir Olly is being lauded to the skies now because he is the victim of ruthless prime ministerial politics, but he also has an angle on this: he massaged, shall we say, his own judgment because he knew the pressure on him from the Government. There was nothing borderline about this; he is saying that it was borderline only because he needs an excuse for having overridden it when he should not have done.

[Alex Ballinger]

I can speak only to what the witness told us in the inquiry this morning. Many Members made the same case that the right hon. Gentleman is making now: that it was a red box case, as we have seen in the evidence submitted. However, Sir Olly was clear that this was a borderline case, and it is usual for the Foreign Office to conduct such cases. The right hon. Gentleman can make up his own mind about whether to believe Sir Olly or other people.

Security Vetting

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that Margaret Hodge will do a very good job in that role, as she has done in so many other roles previously.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Who first suggested to the Prime Minister that Mandelson should be appointed as our ambassador to the United States, or was it just his own idea? Did it never cross his mind that Mandelson was at risk of failing the vetting process? Before sacking Oliver Robbins last week, did the Prime Minister ask him why he overruled the verdict of the security vetters, and if so, what was his explanation?

[The Prime Minister]

I did ask him, and I did not accept his explanation. That is why I sacked him.

Hatzola Ambulance Attack

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend is right that it was sickening, and she was right to raise the important issue of reassurance. A reassurance operation will be under way, conducted by the Metropolitan police and other police forces around the country.

It just happens that the Community Security Trust is having its annual dinner this evening, and I know that a number of hon. Members will be attending. Important messages of solidarity will be delivered at that gathering by both Sir Mark Rowley and the Home Secretary. It is important that that event takes place.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The people who carry out such attacks are mainly seeking to terrorise the target community, but the people who plan such attacks often have another end in mind, which is to set two communities at each other’s throats. Without revealing anything that one should not about the techniques of the Security Service, can we spare a moment to pay tribute to those members of the Muslim community who bravely go undercover to infiltrate plots of this sort, who are briefly seen in court, often under an assumed name, when convictions are assured, and without whose work many more such plots would succeed than is the case?

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very sage point. I make this point in more general terms, because clearly I am not going to get into the specifics of what happened this morning, but he is right to draw a distinction between those who plan the attacks and those who conduct them. I am beyond proud of the work of our intelligence services, who recruit from lots of different backgrounds in our country. They do extraordinary work. By necessity, they do their work in the shadows, but I know that I speak for the whole House when I say that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

Not for the first time, my hon. Friend is spot on. I spoke to young people at Fullhurst school in my constituency and they had very different views about this proposal. We really want to hear directly from young people themselves—we have already had over 1,700 responses—but especially from children. We are partnering with UK Youth and Volunteering Matters to run a series of seven youth-led events across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We will also pilot other potential interventions, including overnight curfews and daily screentime limits, working with children and parents to see what works in practice and its impact on family life.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I hope this is a helpful suggestion to the Secretary of State. There have been some objections to a social media ban for young people based on the fact that it would create a cliff edge, whereby they have no involvement with it and then total involvement with it. Does she agree with me that one way to minimise that danger is to encourage children to use the internet, which is not interactive, as that will gradually acclimatise them for the day when they are able to use interactive services more safely?

[Liz Kendall]

The right hon. Gentleman is always helpful—well, not always, but on this occasion he has been very helpful. The cliff-edge argument has been made to me personally by the NSPCC, the Molly Rose Foundation, the Internet Watch Foundation and others, and it is one that we should take seriously. I have spoken to schools in my constituency about how best to handle it if we were to go ahead with the ban. There is a really important point about young people’s education and awareness, because life is online now and we have to prepare children for the future. That is at the heart of the issues we are debating in the consultation.